Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Greg/Alexis: Killing it with Kindness

Once upon a time I was engaged to be married to my soulmate and if I had never had my life stolen by a cursed Inn, I would today be just past my 1st Anniversary. I dont know what married life is supposed to be like, but Amber and I had been living together for a long time and I knew how to successfully cohabitate with someone that you love.

My current situation, while legally a marriage, is not at all one. I dont expect it to be. It's what I like to call a "marriage by magic". We're to strangers thrown together and told to play like we love each other. Thats a difficult thing to do and I dont blame Malinda for hating it. A commenter told me that I should try being nice to Malinda. Which is what I was going to do anyway because I've dealt with a situation like this before.

My freshman year at the University of Chicago I was assigned a roommate blindly. Turns out mine was a Japanese student named Tashiro, who spoke broken English when he spoke at all and was very cold to me for the first two months.

After a long cold war of silently hating each other, Me and Tosh bonded when I bought a new video game system. Turns out he was really into video games and we were both really competitive. After countless all nighters full of mountain dew and vodka we finally had something to unite us. Tash and I stayed friends throughout college and even emailed after he went back to Japan to work for Nintendo. Now all I need to do is find that common ground with Malinda.

Tash's animosity stemmed mostly from the culture shock of going from Japan to the American Midwest. I think Malinda is going through similar shock going from Bitchy Texan to Gay Artist. Finding common ground with Malinda is difficult thought because she treats me with uneasy precaution. Ever since she found out that I was born male, she thinks I'm on some mission to live out a male fantasy of having lesbian sex with her, so every nice thing I do to her she immediately thinks I'm hitting on her. So any gesture of bonding and kindness has to be done innocuously and totally platonic.

This means the obvious flowers, candy, clothes and makeup are out of the question, which sucks because all girls, even me, like those things. On Last Sunday I decided to to a barbecue, which is a Texas tradition I think. I was grilling the meat but whenever I asked for her help or suggestions she kinda blew me off. Didnt seem to impressed with the meat either.

On Wednesday I tried to do "movie night" where I would bring home some free ice cream and we'd sit in front of the tv in our pajamas and watch a crappy chick flick, something that worked quite well for female bonding when I was Priya. Turns out I underestimated Malinda and she apparently hates chick flicks.

On Friday I made a little progress, I convinced her to leave the house. I think she got tired of being cooped up inside the house was getting to her so we went to see a movie. Captain America isnt as terrible as it looks or sounds and apparently she likes the superhero genre. We talked about movies on the way there and even had a normal convo during the movie. Altough at some point I think she thought it was too much like a date and closed up again. We rode home in silence. Still, baby steps.

Im still exiled to the couch but I'm working on moving a cot or something to her studio that she isnt using. Hopefully I'll find some common ground for us